Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.
Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite – telling them to help themselves to the coffee.
When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups have been taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones.
While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.
Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee.
In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink.
What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups, and then you began eyeing each other’s cups to see who had the best one.
Now consider this said the professor “Life is like a cup of coffee”,
and life is the coffee, the jobs, money and position in society are the cups.
They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of life we live.
Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee.
Savour the coffee, not the cups.
The happiest people don’t have the best of everything.
They just make the best of everything.
Live simply, Love generously, Speak kindly, Care deeply.
Life is like a Cup of Coffee : Author unknown.
Watch the short video clip below (http://youtu.be/ogweL4E24ok) and return for my reflection of this powerful analogy:
Indeed, life is like a cup of coffee (or milo, horlicks, tea, hot chocolate, whatever you like) rather than the old saying that goes: "life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you could get".
And God showed me a few life lessons from this simple but yet powerful analogy:
1. The professor, is likened to God, full of wisdom and available. And for some of us, it was like only yesterday that God was so personally teaching us until we "dropped out" of His classroom. The trouble is, some of us forget about God and His wisdom that has the power to change and turn our lives around. But do we take the effort to commune and fellowship with Him; letting Him minister?
"For the Lord gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and understanding... So you may walk in the way of goodness, And keep to the paths of righteousness. For the upright will dwell in the land, And the blameless will remain in it;" Proverbs 2:6, 20-21 NKJV
2. Indeed life is like coffee (or milo or tea or horlicks or hot chocolate) and God, as the professor provided the coffee, provides life, an abundant supply.
"I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." Jesus in John 10:10b NKJV.
3. The students would have heard the professor say "Help yourselves to the coffee" rather than "help yourselves to the cups". In the same way, God wants us to savour the life He has provided but its a choice. But many a times we get thrown lies to throw us off our feet; making us focus on the cup rather than the coffee. To which the professor would say "Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee". In the same way, one would here God being echoed here, seemingly making a point to focus on the coffee, not the cup. The price has been paid at Calvary for us by Jesus and nothing external will add or deduct from the life through Jesus Christ.
"Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good" Psalms 34:8a NKJV
"The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy." Jesus, John 10:10a NKJV.
"When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it." John 8:44 NKJV
4. And here, rightly pointed out by the professor is where the strife of life happens as everyone compares cups, gets jealous and conflictual. They totally forgot the coffee in them; the coffee that does not change in quality just because of the cup. Jobs, money, unhealthy relationships and positions are but things that surround Life but are not Life itself.
5. Remember that the coffee is from the one who gives.
“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." Matthew 6:25-26, 30-34 NKJV
6. Be a fragrant coffee that others will also want it.
"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:16 NKJV
"Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing." 2 Corinthians 2:14-15 NKJV
Are you having coffee?
